Worst 4th Ed Class

[Mistwell]

I am really not getting the dislike for the wizard. They are my favorite class. The least boring to me. And definitely not underpowered.

I also do not understand why this poll includes classes that are only in playtest or betatest mode right now, or only partially published. Can you really weigh three levels of a beta testing class that is likely to change once fully published against a class in the PHB fairly?

 

[evilbob]

I am really not getting the dislike for the wizard. They are my favorite class. The least boring to me. And definitely not underpowered.

Mistwell and I agree again! So last time was not a fluke...

I totally hear the "paladins are meatbags" thing, but again it sort of depends on how you play. Our paladin gets the crap beat out of him all the time and loves it. He takes the powers that allow him to take damage instead of others, and then takes abilities that make him better when he's bloodied or surrounded. He seriously takes paladins almost into the "leader" role with his damage absorption and healing. But that may be just that one guy.

Personally, I voted for the warlock. They are so strange; stranger even than the warlord who can help anyone but himself. They have striker powers but do defender damage, and they are one of the most powerful -defensive- classes around. Not party defense, but personal defense. Maybe I just haven't seen one played well, though.

 

[Mallus]

Our paladin gets the crap beat out of him all the time and loves it. He takes the powers that allow him to take damage instead of others, and then takes abilities that make him better when he's bloodied or surrounded. He seriously takes paladins almost into the "leader" role with his damage absorption and healing. But that may be just that one guy.

That's the way I'm playing my paladin and I'm having fun.

 

[C_M2008]

Don't really get the hate on for the wizards or warlords, possibly voted for primarily by the pro 3e crowd?

Warlords in my experience are extremely good (I'm tempted to say best class in the game) and Wizards (especially with their dailies) can reshape an entire battle in a single turn and thank goodness they aren't deities in comparison to everyone else anymore.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

The Wizard class has a lot of problems

1. Controller Class Role is very undefined
Defenders - Mark targets and punish them for attacking others
Strikers - Gain bonus damage on certain conditions
Leaders - Minor action heals
Controllers - ????

It was claimed that controllers are the area effect class. But in reality, most classes have great area effect spells (Blinding Barrage, Come and Get It, Blade Barrier, just to name a few). With most classes having area effect, claiming that controllers are the area effect class leaves something to be desired. Controllers need a role defining mechanic ASAP.

2. Wizard Feats are a Mess
Compare Burning Blizzard to Weapon Focus for the most concrete example of this. Burning Blizzard has requires 2 stats and effects powers with cold and acid only. Weapon Focus has no requirements, effects an entire weapon group with any attack that deals damage with the weapon.

3. Wizard Implements are a silly class feature
Fighters pick between Sword and Board, Two-Weapon Fighting, or Two-Handed fighting. Rangers pick between beastmaster, ranged, or two-weapon. Rogues have BS or AD. These all provide powerful effects, bonus feats, and access to improved powers.

Tell me the fundamental difference between a staff wizard and a wand wizard. Yeah, almost nothing. No bonus feats, no powers tied into them, no class changing functionality.

4. Spellbooks
Spell books are a mess. Examples:

• I multi-class into Warlock and take a 2nd level warlock utility power via the power swap feat. What happens? Do I replace both my 2nd level utilities for that one power? Do I pick one power to remove from my spell book and add the warlock power in its place? What happens if I pick a non-arcane utility?
• My spell book gets stolen, can I get my Daily and Utility Spells? Can I still swap out daily and utility spells? Can I get my At Will and Encounter Powers?
• What makes daily and utility spells different enough to fit into a spell book while At-Will and Encounter powers can not?

In short, spell books are confusing, clumsy, and poorly implemented

5. Too many powers that give up damage for save ending effects
Saving throws are made at 55% base. Because of this, any save ends effect you put on a target is going to be very short lived. Furthermore, too many powers give up damage (or deal less damage) to provided save ending effects. Sleep is the poster child for this effect. If you assume a 55% chance to hit and a 55% save chance, the chance of putting a target to sleep is 24.75%. Thus on average, you'll need to target four opponents to put one of them to sleep. Plus the spell can hit friendly targets.

Compare this power with Blinding Barrage which deals 2[W]+dex and blinds on a hit (or half-damage and no blind on a miss) and is selective with what targets it hits.

Because savings are easy to make, powers that sacrifice damage for status effects are typically a bad deal for the Wizard.

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I am playing a 4E wizard and I voted for 4E wizard. The class is really a mess at the moment.

 

[Dausuul]

3. Wizard Implements are a silly class feature
Fighters pick between Sword and Board, Two-Weapon Fighting, or Two-Handed fighting. Rangers pick between beastmaster, ranged, or two-weapon. Rogues have BS or AD. These all provide powerful effects, bonus feats, and access to improved powers.

Tell me the fundamental difference between a staff wizard and a wand wizard. Yeah, almost nothing. No bonus feats, no powers tied into them, no class changing functionality.

5. Too many powers that give up damage for save ending effects
Saving throws are made at 55% base. Because of this, any save ends effect you put on a target is going to be very short lived. Furthermore, too many powers give up damage (or deal less damage) to provided save ending effects. Sleep is the poster child for this effect. If you assume a 55% chance to hit and a 55% save chance, the chance of putting a target to sleep is 24.75%. Thus on average, you'll need to target four opponents to put one of them to sleep. Plus the spell can hit friendly targets.

Compare this power with Blinding Barrage which deals 2[W]+dex and blinds on a hit (or half-damage and no blind on a miss) and is selective with what targets it hits.

Okay, while I agree with your points 1, 2, and 4, you should really reconsider your position on these two... because sleep + orb wizard is really, really scary.

Take my 11th-level orb wizard. He's got a Wisdom of 18 and Spell Focus. That means that I can toss sleep on a bunch of monsters, pick one sad sack out of the ones that I hit, and nail him with a -6 penalty to his saving throw - he's gotta roll a 16 or better to make it. And if he fails, the party rogue will be around shortly to deliver a coup de grace for approximately eleventy billion points of damage.

(Did I mention sleep knocks you unconscious? It doesn't actually put you to sleep. So those eleventy billion points of damage don't wake you up.)

If I catch two or three monsters in the burst, it's usually a death sentence for one of them. That's for one daily and one encounter power, costing one round for me and one for the rogue. Pretty darn good deal. And it could easily kill more than that, considering Spell Focus imposes -2 on everything hit. I once saw an entire encounter wiped out by a single sleep spell.

I'll undoubtedly swap out my other spells eventually, but I expect to keep sleep all the way into epic tier, if the campaign lasts that long.

 

[Akaiku]

The wizard definitely stands out as the only class I've never seen someone enjoy playing. Even online, most things about wizards are "OMG Orb+Sleep=murder" or the like. In the event you aren't a orb wizard and didn't take sleep, you spam your at wills and hope enough minions are lined up so you don't kill your friends with your aoe. My experience is only low levels, but that's where people like to start their games, for some reason. A close second is the warlord, but I saw someone fix that issue by simply having an executioner's axe. Doing a billion damage with at wills helps the fact that your extra bonuses don't affect you.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Okay, while I agree with your points 1, 2, and 4, you should really reconsider your position on these two... because sleep + orb wizard is really, really scary.

Take my 11th-level orb wizard. He's got a Wisdom of 18 and Spell Focus. That means that I can toss sleep on a bunch of monsters, pick one sad sack out of the ones that I hit, and nail him with a -6 penalty to his saving throw - he's gotta roll a 16 or better to make it. And if he fails, the party rogue will be around shortly to deliver a coup de grace for approximately eleventy billion points of damage.

Sleep + Orb is scary, on one target (as orb lets you effect only one target, not everyone hit by the spell). Lets plug in a hit chance of 55% with your 75% chance of save failure. That ends up being a 41.25% chance to cause the target to fall unconscious. Not bad, but we did have to wait until we got to the Paragon tier to pull that off. Additionally, each other target in the sleep spell still has only a 30.25% chance fall unconscious. So, I'll give you that Sleep + Orb at paragon tier is good.

(Actually, this begins to fall into the Save or Die grouping. But that's a discussion for another day )

The question is, are implements an interesting class feature. For my buck, the answer is a resounding no as they do not change the way the class is played at any significant level. An orb wizard is going to play extremely similar if not identical to a wand or staff wizard. Thus, this class does not lend itself to interesting character design (worse actually as the Wand and Staff are very much inferior to the Orb).

As for the limited duration Status Effects at the cost of damage, this may be colored by the group I play in. There is a Paladin and a Fighter who are both hard core defenders. If they show sound tactics, often times my "neat status effect" is worthless as the mobs are tied down already. Mileage my vary on these powers depending on the group.

 

[Dausuul]

Sleep + Orb is scary, on one target (as orb lets you effect only one target, not everyone hit by the spell). Lets plug in a hit chance of 55% with your 75% chance of save failure. That ends up being a 41.25% chance to cause the target to fall unconscious. Not bad, but we did have to wait until we got to the Paragon tier to pull that off. Additionally, each other target in the sleep spell still has only a 30.25% chance fall unconscious. So, I'll give you that Sleep + Orb at paragon tier is good.

It's actually better than 41.25%, because you get to pick who eats the save penalty after you determine whom you hit. Say you're aiming at three targets, you have roughly a 91% chance to hit at least one of them. That guy is the one who eats the save penalty. Add in the possibility of hitting the other targets and them failing their saves, and you end up with a 77% chance to drop at least one foe (28% chance to drop at least two, 4% chance to drop all three).

Anyway, setting sleep aside, the ability to drastically reduce one enemy's saving throws makes "save-duration" spells quite useful. I actually had a hard time finding as many of them as I wanted for my wizard.

The question is, are implements an interesting class feature. For my buck, the answer is a resounding no as they do not change the way the class is played at any significant level. An orb wizard is going to play extremely similar if not identical to a wand or staff wizard. Thus, this class does not lend itself to interesting character design (worse actually as the Wand and Staff are very much inferior to the Orb).

I still don't really agree with this. I haven't tried a wand wizard yet, but the staff wizard is a pretty interesting thing to play. It's basically like getting a second use of the shield power. Since shield is one of the best wizard utilities, especially for its level, this enables you to make a wizard who can stand up in the front lines with the best of them.

The wand wizard also looks like it has good potential. Action Surge is one of the best human feats, because it gives you a massive bonus to hit right when you need it. If the staff wizard gets a second use of shield, the wand wizard gets two extra uses of Action Surge (since you only get to use the latter once per two combats). Granted, it only works on a single target, but still... wizards have enough single-target spells to make it worth it.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I voted wizard for some of the reasons that have already been mentioned

1) No clear 'controller role' class ability

2) Not enough differentiation between wand/orb/staff wizards

3) Only 3 powers have secondary effects that are based on another ability (Wis), giving a further (if limited) boost to orb wizards. Why don't they have some abilities with a boost based upon Dex and Con, eh? Or based upon implement as they were saying in the earlier design and development preview?

4) Pointless ability restrictions on feats. Someone mentioned burning blizzard, but that is actually the easiest to get (as most wizards want Int and Wis), but what about astral fire? Con and Dex? WTH? Compared to the weapon feat, they should have either had an implement focus feat or just removed the ability minimums as it is bad enough having to collect a set of energy buff feats rather than just having one feat to buff all your attacks like the martial guys get.

Cheers